Why make a remark like this?
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday expressed sympathy for former president Richard M. Nixon, suggesting that Nixon was wrongly forced out as president in 1974 and comparing his political travails decades ago to those facing President Donald Trump now.
“As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” Vance said in remarks at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.” [WaPo]
A couple of explanations that come to mind.
- It’s part, even the consequent of, an attempt to normalize the repugnant behavior of an American President. By so doing, they normalize the behavior of President Trump, not only legally but socially. That social normalization I see as basically a defensive maneuver as the Republicans attempt to make President Trump’s behavior acceptable to doubtful members of the Party.
- Vance is trying to be cool, like a younger kid trying to be cool with the older kids through imitation. He doesn’t really get it; he’s marinated in the culture of victimhood for long enough that even the remark, You can hear him suborn perjury on the tapes. He’s telling an intermediary, what to tell someone who’s about to be interviewed by the FBI, what to say and what not to say, by Presidential historian Timothy Naftali, doesn’t penetrate the repeated message.
All this doesn’t reflect well on the Republican Party. A key part of governance is the ability to recognize and comprehend basic realities. He doesn’t seem to have that ability, which makes the thought of a Trump resignation disturbing.
